Was: Shuttleworth (SABDFL) wants to shutdown this ubuntu.user list

[Rashkae]

The discussion that this thread has spawned has planted this great world 
changing idea in my head.  This is a desperately needed improvement for 
mailman.

As I understand it, a large part of the problem with moderating the 
mailing list is how limited moderation is (assuming the list remains 
open vs. 100% moderated.)  When someone sends an ill thought message, 
it's already been received by every recipient.  Moderators can only 
admonish the sender or ban them from posting.  Either way, the thousands 
of people will continue replying to the original message.  The result is 
that every 'bad' message will inevitably snowball.

My idea is simply that mailman requires a function to 'lock a thread'.  
When invoked by a moderator, any reply to any message in that discussion 
thread gets rejected.  I see no reason why this would not be relatively 
trivial to implement.  Sure, it would be easy for people to work around, 
but only a few would, and those can be dealt with directly as 
misbehaving agents.  I think that effectively disabling people's 'reply' 
button to an unwanted discussion thread would solve 90% of the problems 
with a list like this.